


Ghost Lights

by khiori



Series: Daemon Light [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3927769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khiori/pseuds/khiori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Midgardians call felagi 'daemons'. They believe they are their souls in animal form."<br/>"Do you disagree, brother?"<br/>"I am not sure I'd have a soul to form."<br/>...<br/>A look at some of my favourite Marvel characters in my favourite AU--daemons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tony was used to the odd looks he got when people first saw Sephara. The American people, he'd learned, expected billionaire playboys to have billionaire playboy daemons--a lion, perhaps, or if he was going with his avian nature, a peacock. 

Nick Fury was the first person he'd met in a long time who'd looked at Sephara with anything other than disappointed shock. "She's a--"

"Red-billed chough," Fury finished for him. 

Tony blinked, his lips still forming the words. "Brownie points to the super spy," he murmured.

"I've been researching you for a while, Mr Stark; you won't surprise me with a thing as defining as your daemon." 

Fury's own daemon was a grizzled pit bull; her brindle coat had more scars than Fury himself, and Tony was pretty sure she could kill him if she looked at him just right. "What's Seph got to do with your super secret boy band? Do our deamons need to match for me to qualify with the team?"

"You don't qualify, but she has nothing to do with that," Fury said flatly.

Tony couldn't help a sharp spike of hurt. On his shoulder, Seph ruffled her coal-black feathers. "Why not?" 

"Read the file," Fury said, turning to leave. His daemon fixed them with a last hard stare, then followed at his heels. 

Sephara flitted from his shoulder to the beige file on the desk and tugged it open with her crimson beak. "Apparently," she said, "we're volatile, narcissistic and self obsessed."  She said

"Well we can't argue with that, can we?" 

* * *

 

It wasn't Clint that made the different call. It was Alesa who snatched the arrow from his bow string, snapping it between her talons and telling him, on no uncertain terms, that they were going to bring the Black Widow in--and not in a body bag. 

The first words Natasha ever said to him were in reference to Alesa. "A bit predictable, isn't she, Hawkeye?" 

"Technically," he'd told her over their raised and loaded guns, "she's a jackal buzzard." 

He'd been creeped out at the time, goose flesh crawling all over his arms and down his spine, because he was staring at her gun barrel (aimed directly at Alesa, and wasn't  _that_ a cruel way to kill) and he  _couldn't see her daemon._ He'd heard all kinds of rumours about the Widow program, but never that they Severed girls. He'd only seen it once before, in a child prostitution ring that wanted to make the kids docile and quiet, but the woman he was facing seemed so  _normal._ Surely, she must have a daemon. 

He'd pushed the issue aside in order to bring her in, and it wasn't until hours later, in a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet on the way back to the Triskelion, that he looked across and saw Temero for the first time. The tiny lizard crept from the long cuff of her sleeve and made his slow way across her left hand, his scales darkening from pale tan until he was almost black. 

He expected such a small, vulnerable daemon to be a liability in the field, but he quickly learned otherwise. Temero would curl up into the hollow of her collarbone, barely five centimetres in diameter when he tucked his tail around his head. Natasha's uniform was re-enforced there, hard enough to protect him from anything up to a direct bullet wound, and he was near enough that he could whisper to her. It wasn't long before Clint began to wish he could have a similar arrangement for Alesa. 

After one particularly grueling mission that ended with a drug baron's fox daemon taking Alesa by the wing and dragging her  _away from him_ while he choked and screamed and vomited, Natasha and Temero sat up with them all night, Temero speaking comfortingly to Alesa while Nat pressed a cool flannel to the back of his neck. 

"In the Widow program," she said softly, "they assessed us as soon as our daemons settled."

Clint stilled, swallowing hard; she'd never spoken of the program before. 

"There was a girl called Anja," she continued. "She was deadly; had the highest marks on any test the threw at us. And she was ruthless; she would have been the perfect Widow. Her daemon settled when she was fourteen. I can't remember his name, but I remember he settled as a sun bear. The next day, they disposed of Anja. A large, recognisable daemon was useless to them...I was lucky, with Temero." 

The chameleon nodded sagely and crawled up onto her shoulder, turning his skin the same vivid orange as her hair. 

Clint summoned a laugh, gathering Alesa carefully into his arms. "You say lucky, I say unbearably cunning." 

"Easy, cowboy, I just saved your life," she retorted. 

"We'll walk it off." 

* * *

 

The punching bag was about the only place Steve felt anywhere near normal. Most of his time, when he wasn't asleep, or researching the seventy years he'd missed, was spent working out his frustration on a bag full of sand. 

At first, Nyasia had paced the gym restlessly, her claws clicking on the wooden floor. Then, she'd grown angry and tried to drag him away from the bag, clenching her teeth in his jacket and tugging until he shouted that he didn't want her help, (didn't want the memories, the guilt, the grief) didn't need it. Finally, she'd taken to lying down as far from him as their bond would allow, her tail curled around her paws. 

That arrangement had worked for weeks before Director Fury walked in on their new life. Steve had just sent a bag flying across the room, a split down one side, his shoulders heaving with exertion. The Director's feet were silent on the gym floor, but Nyasia had scented him as soon as he'd walked through the door. "Steve," she said quietly, slinking to his side.

"I've never seen a dhole daemon before," the Director greeted. 

Steve stiffened, his ears burning. Nya's form had been a common topic of discussion when he'd first had the serum; because surely,  _surely,_ Captain America should have a bald eagle daemon? "I've never thought much about it," he lied. He and Bucky had spent endless hours researching their daemons, what they meant. 

"Well, Captain Rogers, I have. Dholes are loyal, aren't they? And brave. Exactly what I need in a soldier." 

"What's the mission?" He asked, exchanging a glance with Nya. Differences in opinion aside, they were a team--and being soldiers was what they did. This, finally, was familiarity in a strange world. 

"Same as it always is," Fury shrugged, extending a beige file. "Trying to save the world."

* * *

 

 Jane Foster looked between the god she was coming to love and the giant daemon at his side. Thor's Hillevi was a mountain goat, only she was almost six feet tall and her wickedly curved horns were shining, solid gold. Her dark eyes were old with wisdom and her giant hooves left dents upon the floor, yet she was unimaginably gentle with Jane's tiny Brangaine. The Rhesus monkey had taken to sitting atop one of Hillevi's golden horns to groom her snowy coat, ultimately falling asleep on the divine deamon's head. 

It was Hillevi that convinced Jane Thor really was the god of thunder, and not the mad homeless person Darcy had presumed him. When she'd first hit him with the van and taken him to hospital, she'd assumed his daemon was too small to be seen--a songbird, or an insect, perhaps, safely curled in his clothes. It hadn't been until the next day, when they'd taken Thor back to her lab, that the giant daemon had wandered through the door and hurried to his side, butting him affectionately with her nose. 

"How is it that you can be so far away from each other?" Jane demanded, mindful of Bran sat only a few inches from her arm. 

Thor frowned. "It is natural for my people. It was the Asgardians who first taught humans how to see their daemons, and, once we'd showed the first, it became second nature, so interwoven that humans forgot they'd ever not seen their daemons. But they never learned how to be apart from them, as we do."

"So you're saying, in Asgard, people just wander around--alone?" the astrophysicist shuddered at the thought. Being away from Bran--it was simply unnatural. 

"Most chose to keep their  _felagi_ close, but yes, they often wander freely. Often, my father's Munin will carry messages to my mother." Thor said patiently.

" _Felagi?"_  

"Our word for them," he explained. "It means much the same. Anyway, it would be impossible for me to fight with Hillevi tied to my side."

"Why? She looks pretty badass, I wouldn't want to mess with those horns," Jane said warily. 

It was Hillevi who answered, shifting slowly forwards. "He did not say I do not fight, simply that we do not fight together. I've never quite mastered the art of flight, my dear," she laughed. 

* * *

 

Natasha had seen the footage of the Hulk raging through Harlem, noted the giant boar daemon at his side with its rolling, mad eyes and foaming mouth. The dainty, almost-white pig with her small, slender feet and bright, intelligent eyes, was therefore a shock that almost rattled her cover. 

She finally asked him about it on the quinjet. (Anything to pass the time on a ten hour flight.)

"It's a bigger surprise to me, trust me," Banner said with a wry smile, scratching his Maisha behind her ears. She was small enough to fit comfortably in his lap, and, when she spoke to him, her voice was soft and melodious. "I guess the...Other Guy has another daemon. Or maybe we both just turn into our worst selves."

Maisha rolled her eyes upwards. "Speak for yourself," she reprimanded him. "I happen to look very fetching with dark hair." 

Natasha shook her head in amazement. "I don't know whether the two of you are quite what Fury's expecting."

"You said you don't need the Other Guy," Banner said quickly. 

"We don't," she reassured him. "I've just never met two more docile people in my life."

Maisha twitched her snout. "Careful," she said. "You won't like us when we're angry."

"That's my line," Banner muttered.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Loki was aware that Skadi worried people. She'd settled relatively early, before Thor's Hillevi, despite the age difference between the two brothers. It wasn't her form that bothered people, unnerving as her silvery-green eyes were, but the fact that, with just a whisper or a flick of his fingers, she could still change. Of course, it wasn't a true shift, anymore than he was capable of actually altering his true form--merely a glamour of astonishing power, so seamless that it was impossible for anyone but his mother to know the difference. 

Fury certainly found the duo unsettling, Loki was delighted to see. The glass cage they'd led him to was brightly lit and Skadi's emerald scales gleamed under the fluorescent bulbs, coiled around his arm in the shape of a python. It was not a shape she favoured, but it was certainly useful in keeping to the image the Midgardians had of him. 

"It's an impressive cage," he allowed, gesturing around his prison. "Not built, I think, for us."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you," Fury retorted. 

"Oh, I've heard. A mindless beast, makes play he's still a man. How  _desperate_ are you, that you call on such lost creatures to defend you?" He demanded. Skadi flowed down his arm, her sinuous body pooling on the floor. With a flicker of jade magic, she melted into the shape of a grizzled, brindle canine--the mirror image of the beast at Fury's side. 

The Midgardian director flinched in surprise, resting his hand upon his daemon's head for reassurance. "How desperate am I?" He echoed. "You threaten my world with war; you steal a force you can't hope to control; you talk about peace, and you kill 'cos it's  _fun._ You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

Skadi stepped forwards then, pacing the outer limit of their cage, just a little further from him than he knew would be comfortable for a Midgardian and their soul. How limited they were. "It burns you, doesn't it?" She asked loudly, using the voice of Fury's own daemon. "To have the tesseract? To have power; _unlimited_ power . . . and for what? A warm light for all mankind to share?"

As she walked, he let his magic ripple through her fur. Her legs lengthened, her tail swept out behind her, silvery fur covered the lithe, slinking body of her true form. The snow leopard stopped directly in front of Loki, her tail brushing his boots, her eyes cool and severe upon Fury's dog. "And then to be reminded what  _real_ power is," she finished, raising her chin. 

"Thor said you were an unnatural son of a bitch," Fury growled, his eyes never straying from Loki's. 

The trickster laughed, then, running a hand through the silky fur at the base of Skadi's neck. "I prefer adaptable." 

 


	3. Chapter 3

The door slamming open startled Skye so much that Jacopo screamed and leaped into her arms, wrapping his fluffy tail around her arm. She set him a dirty look; she’d managed not to jump when the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents appeared, and he’d ruined her attempt to appear cool and unruffled.

“Hey,” she tried anyway. “What up?”

There was a brief flash of movement from the taller man, before everything went dark and she was hauled from the van and frogmarched back down the alley. “I said we were going to get carried away,” Jacopo hissed, his face pressed against the outside of the bag. “Didn’t I say?”

“Shut up,” she whispered back. “This is the plan.”

“I hate your plans.”

  
**

  
She was slammed down into a hard, cool, metal chair before her hands were uncuffed and the hood was finally yanked from her head. She looked up and met the eyes of a mild looking man with a pleasant smile and an overly neat suit. His daemon was some kind of dog, she saw, with sandy fur and bright eyes.

Confident that he probably wasn’t going to shoot her there and then, Skye glared up at him. “You’re making a big mistake,” she snapped.

“You don’t look that big.” The voice was cold and came from an unlit corner of the metal cell. A man stepped forwards—the tall guy who’d bagged her—into the light.

She saw now that he was tall and broadly built, and, though she hated to admit it, not bad looking. “I’m ashamed of us,” Jacopo muttered.

“What?” she hissed back—government operative or not, the guy was cut.

“I’m sorry for the lack of finesse,” the first agent interrupted her thoughts. “Agent Ward here has had a little history with your group . . . the ‘Rising Tide’.” His tone and the slight wag of his daemon’s tail told Skye exactly what he thought of the name. Jacopo bristled; the name had been one of his ideas.

“Okay,” Ward said. “There are two ways we can do this.”

Skye smirked. “Oh, if one of them the easy way?”

“No.” Her eyes flicked down to a shifting shadow at his side; his daemon was behind him and hidden by the gloom, but Skye got the immediate impression that she was large and about as friendly as her human.

“What’s your name?”

“Skye,” she allowed, heeding Jacopo’s edgy glances at the shape of Ward’s daemon.

“What’s your real name?”

“That can wait,” the first agent interrupted. “It’s another name we need, a certain hero.”

“What makes you think I know that?” She stalled. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jacopo burry his furry face in his small paws. She huffed; he never missed an opportunity to remind her that she couldn’t lie to save her life.

“You made a mistake,” the agent said pleasantly. “The phone you filmed the hooded hero on has the same cryptographic signature as some Rising Tide posts.”

“Wow,” she smiled. “Was that a mistake, or am I now sitting in your secret headquarters? By now, you’ve discovered you can’t crack the encryption on my equipment, so, you got nothing.”

The agent was still smiling, and his daemon had sat at his side with her paws neatly crossed. “We have a fairly strong co-incidence. You being at the scene, moments before it went up in flames. Want to tell me what my agents will find there?”

Now that Skye looked, there was something—off about the man’s daemon. Her eyes were a little two bright for a dog’s, and there was something in the tight angle of her ears and the arch of her neck that was purely predatory. She swallowed nervously, and Jacopo slid from his usual perch on her shoulder into her arms. “Skye,” he whispered, “I think we’re out of our depth.”  
**


	4. Chapter 4

The newest studies said that you couldn't really tell what kind of person someone was by looking at their daemon; that they reflected something so deeply embedded that even the human often couldn’t explain their own soul.

Personally, Jemma thought that was rubbish. Her Raleigh hadn't settled until they were seventeen, only weeks before she'd entered the S.H.I.E.L.D. SciOps academy. When Raleigh had fluttered the wings of an African Grey Parrot and cheerfully informed her that he wasn't going to be shifting any more, she'd been overjoyed for a number of reasons--not least that having two PhDs but not a settled daemon was more than a little embarrassing.

They suited each other well, Jemma thought; parrots were intelligent animals, particularly African Greys, and Raleigh's precise claws and strong beak came in handy in any number of lab situations. If Raleigh was sometimes a little jealous of Sulis' dainty, delicate paws, well, that was between the two daemons.

"What do you think of Agent Ward?" She asked Fitz, after checking to make sure the lab and cargo hold were deserted except for the two of them.

His shoulders tensed, and then he spun on his stool to face her, drumming his fingers on the desk. "I don't know," he said eventually.

Sulis twitched her nose. "He seems very nice," she murmured. "It's just--"

"--his daemon." Raleigh finished.

Jemma bit her lip, running a finger through the soft feathers on Raleigh's breast. Daemons were as varied as humans; she’d seen everything from a tiny ladybird daemon to a long-suffering S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist’s musk ox, but Ward’s Varna worried her more than any she’d ever seen. People just _didn’t have_ wolf daemons any more. Wolves, lions, bears—they’d been more common, long ago, when people had more room and were brought up from birth to fight, but these days? The only people who had those daemons were disturbed, unstable.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing,” Jemma insisted. “Wolves are very loyal, Fitz.”

The door to the storage compartment clicked open, and both scientists jumped. Skye poked her head around the door sheepishly. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She wandered into the lab, Jacopo in his usual place on her shoulder. “What’s up?” She asked, looking between the two.

Fitz shifted uncomfortably. “We were just talking about Ward. And . . . Varna.”

“Oh.” Skye shuddered, running an absent hand through Jacopo’s fluffy tail. “I remember this one time, at a community home I was in; there was this girl a few years older than us. She must have been about fifteen; anyway, her daemon started spending a lot of time as a wolf, and not shifting nearly as often. They sent her to counselling, had her see a load of therapists. He ended up a gecko, I think.”

Sulis rubbed her paws over her face and exchanged a glance with Raleigh; the red squirrel daemon hadn’t wanted to join the team in the first place. “It’s not her form,” she said quietly. “It’s how silent she is. I don’t think she’s spoken two sentences to us in the entire three days we’ve known them.”

“To be fair, Sul, you did pull out some of her fur when we first met them,” Raleigh pointed out.

It was Fitz who responded, “That was scientifically justified!”

The intercom clicked on at that minute, and May’s voice echoed through the lab, calling them all to a meeting. Coulson and Ward were already in the lounge when the three junior members of the team arrived, and Coulson’s Isla lifted her sandy head in greeting. Varna, a dark shadow at Ward’s side, was silent.

 


End file.
